Partly Unknown
by schnook
Summary: On a late evening stroll, Misaki Igarashi beholds the strangest sight. Silhouetted against the sun, a gangly boy seems to be precariously placed upon the ocean. The sun eventually calms, and through the dim dusk, she can make out a pair of curious green eyes staring straight back at her. AU.


**A/N: I know. I'm here. Writing. And stuff. Apparently, miracles **_**do**_** exist.**

**Title: Partly Unknown**

**Summary: On a late evening stroll, Misaki Igarashi beholds the strangest sight. Silhouetted against the sun, a gangly boy seems to be precariously placed upon the ocean. The sun calms, and through the dim dusk, she can make out a pair of curious green eyes staring straight back at her. AU. (Oneshot unless persuaded otherwise.)**

**Show: Kaichou Wa Maid-Sama!**

**Pairing: Misaki/Tora/Usui**

**-x-x-x-**

**Part I**

Inevitable as it was, the scent of crushed pine needles reminded her of the way sunshine often eluded the East. It was her first thought upon entering the small villa. Her second thought lingered on her husband's sturdy frame, twisting this way and that, giving directions to the housekeepers with a kind of despotism that he was easily identified by. To be specific, though, she thought of her love for him.

He was not an easy man to love - though she often suspected that this applied to the male gender in its entirety. If love had come easily, it would have settled about her like soft gossamer threads, enveloping her, creeping its way into small, dark corners. Her husband, however, had left many of her dark corners untouched. Her husband was a sweeping tidal wave that slit beneath her feet in haste and carried her to foreign places with funny names. Like here, where she stood now – a small, coastal villa with a funny name and foreign housekeepers.

"I'm taking you to the sunshine," he had told her.

She had been sceptical of the sunshine at first, but relented, then finally graciously accepted after some thought on the matter. She would let him show her his sunshine. She would appraise its worth.

As it happened, she had not been beneath the sunshine for three months. No one had. It had been a particularly long, hard winter down where Tora's business headquarters were, and she was beginning to forget what warmth felt like. He told her it would be a Holiday for the two of them (and a handful of select employees who felt that trading in their Christmas bonuses equalled special treatment). Misaki suspected he held favour to the word. What he meant to say, she thinks, is Escape. Escapism made sense, perfect sense, against the hard winter they had just fled from. Winter was never just winter at Igarashi Inc. Winter was long nights and ringing up huge phone bills. Winter was takeout dinners for one and promised sweaters. It was desperation and just a little bit of bitterness, rolled closer to the fire in an attempt to thaw out all those misunderstandings.

The greatest misunderstanding, though, was that she minded. But she actually didn't mind, and had come four hours by plane to allow his sunshine to settle upon her upturned face in a coastal villa with a funny name and foreign housekeepers.

And the villa smelt of crushed pine needles and salt.

**Part II**

"I'm taking you to the beach," he tells her.

He's a good man, her husband, and as she decides this, she feels relief as a buoyance to her limbs. They're in their room, littered with the efforts of half-hearted unpacking, and she's debating over two swimsuits, and he's just come off the phone.

"Right now?"

Tora grins, rakish and fox-like, and so much like the boy she met five years ago. He doesn't answer – he likes to think he can maintain an air of mystery and allure – but lifts the old green suit out of her hands, leaving her with the golden designer two-piece he brought home for her one day after a business trip to North Australia.

He tells her he's missed her.

She tells him she likes the green better.

And just like that, his phone is buzzing again, and he tosses it beneath the misshapen piles of unsorted packing, and he's kissing her on the jaw while she grips the golden garment.

**Part III**

For one week Tora's been delayed by work. They eat dinner together – a fussy affair she can never quite grasp with too much ice and garnish – and then he retires to another bedroom he's reclaimed as a study. At first, she waits for him in bed, or on the couch, or by the pool. Eventually, he's working mornings too, and she's excited to have the time to dig her heels into the sand without him hovering behind her, asking what the hell she is doing.

Married for three years now, Misaki can't quite recall what it felt like to be single. Was she lonely? Was she lonely now? Faint, it all seems too faint. It only takes her a moment to realise loneliness has never really applied to her. She seems to do just fine with whatever is thrown toward her.

It only takes another small moment to realise that somewhere down the track, she has buried deep whatever it was that made her Misaki Ayuzawa.

Behind her, from within the villa, she can hear Tora calling her. But she can't bring herself to feel like sex. Now she's slightly pissed, and all she wants to do is dig her heels into the sand, burying her feet. Misaki decides tomorrow will be different.

**Part IV**

It's Tuesday evening, and she's left the villa to go for a walk.

To her surprise, the entire coastal village seems to have that lingering scent of pine needles, and for no conceivable reason. The only trees that dot the area are the tropical kind, standing tall and slightly chagrined, as if embarrassed by their elaborate display against the poorer quarters. It's not an entirely derelict place, though. Business is booming. A few fishermen wave from the shore, though more out of custom than interest. Their silhouettes are blackened against the arid sunset, not so much pinks and reds as washed out greys and smoke. It casts shadows against the mansions Western superstars have claimed for themselves, empty at all times except for when fancied. There's a cry from the water, as if a fisherman had accidentally hooked his hand, followed by heavy laughter. Fish flicking in the water. Dry wind burning her throat. Pine needles singing somewhere beyond the mountains.

A boy, gangly to the point of ridiculous has one foot on one stone, the other foot on a precarious looking dried lump of seaweed and fishing net. He's a couple of metres out into the water, deep enough to bathe, shallow enough to stand fairly easily. But silhouetted against the setting sun, it almost appears as though he's walking on water.

Then it's gone, and the sun has calmed from behind him, and Misaki can make it out a pair of curious green eyes in the settling dusk.

Not quite sure what to do, and far from comfortable with any person young enough to view her as old, she manages a, "You alright?"

The boy straightens immediately, and she discovers he is even taller than she first suspected. Fourteen, or perhaps even a tall thirteen-year-old. Dirty blonde hair is crisped with suggestions of lingering salt. She half expects him to topple from his makeshift pedestal and plunge into the cooling water, but instead, he merely arranges himself to stand on the one stone, looking directly at her.

Eventually, "Yes."

"Oh."

She's never had too much experience with young teenage boys, apart from her brief spell in high school where she developed the reputation of a tyrant, and her next door neighbour who had been susceptible to spurts of unrequited love. And now this one, who stands in the beginnings of the wide, incomprehensible ocean with too much guilelessness to be read in his face. She can't seem to place him. Somewhat distantly, he reminds her of a gazelle.

Curious, she asks him before she can stop herself, "How are you going to get back to shore?"

He regards her with what seems like humour for a moment, before stepping off the rock and into the waist-high ocean. Calmly, he walks toward her steadily, ignoring the small waves gently lapping against his back.

He comes up to her chin, a mess of blonde hair, wet trousers and old flannel shirt.

"Like that."

She feels like laughing.

**Part V, part a.**

"You sound like the crickets from my hometown."

He's an odd young thing, coming out with things she never expected or asked him to say. She doesn't really listen to half of what he has to say – not that he has much to contribute in the first place. It's more the keen looks and wandering eye that makes him the gazelle she had never had the chance to meet before. He leans his head back and flutters his eyelids, as if feeling the particles in the air with the most sensitive places of his body. She regards him with sardonic humour, a small guffaw at his trembling flannel shirt and serene smile. He's an interesting little thing, she tells herself. Full of hope and starlight.

But of course, that's a lie of her own creation. With great trepidation, she knows she patronises him because she fears him. Fears him like the plague.

She manages a weak smile. "The crickets, huh?" A dull kind of laugh.

"There were never any crickets in my hometown," he confides.

She tries to smile again.

**Part V, part b.**

It's a new night, and his arms are spread towards the heavens on the old fishing dock.

"Enlightenment and fire. Fire and desire. Desire and hope. Hope and desperation. This is the mantra of the worshipper of the moon." He sits back, eyes clear and bright and greener than the intoxicating poisons she finds in the cleaning aisle of the supermarket. Tonight, he is no longer a gazelle, but a wild, wild hawk. His face even seems more pointed than before, as if already naturally gravitating toward some unseen prey. He turns to her, standing behind him, smile bright, disarming, and a little dangerous. "I no longer live by day," the boy informs her knowingly. "I no longer surrender to what is seen so clearly by day. I now bow before you, and before the unseen – yet felt – tremors of the night. This is what people miss, what people crave. Clear, clean and crisp moonlight. I can feel it within my veins. I am a moon worshipper! A moon worshipper!"

Politely, Misaki enquires, "What will you do by day, then?"

He turns to her, frowns only minutely, and Misaki is sure she has failed him in some kind of way.

"What everyone does," he tells her, and moves so quickly he is suddenly brushing her cheek with the back of his fingers so lightly she can't be quite certain he's really there. "Struggle."

But she knows better, she knows. Only he doesn't know. "People don't _struggle_," she lightly informs him. Happy to defend, happy to teach. "They _live_ – struggling is living. Living is struggling. Life is a quick succession of busy nothings resulting in one massive struggle." She smiles, more to herself than the boy.

However. He is the hawk tonight, and there is displeasure in the downturn of his mouth, a heavy question weighing upon the youthful brow. Everything about him says he is younger than her, looser than her, smaller than her. Yet his eyes scream he is the hawk tonight. "But you don't struggle. You're encased in glass, a flower in its vase sitting in a foreign villa with a funny name. You're withered – look at you!" He tosses his feet over the dock and into the ocean and kicks about petulantly. "Look at you!" He exclaims, "Look at you!"

Misaki hurries home.

**Part V, part c.**

Misaki googles _Asperger's Syndrome_ on her computer, and feels less troubled. (For his sake.)

**Part V, part d.**

The next night, Misaki finds the blonde boy out standing ankle-deep in the ocean, swelling and disappearing about him in an array of liquid froth.

The moment he catches sight of her on the boardwalk, he burst out in raucous laughter. (For his sake.)

**Part VI**

Tora suspects she may be having some form of extramarital affair. He is surprised, to be sure, but not scandalised by the idea. After all, they are both aware that he himself has had his share of rendezvous in the past. Misaki had always seemed too stubborn for that kind of thing, though. It took a certain amount of flamboyance and ego to go about conducting an affair, after all – both of which things Misaki had always severely lacked. Perhaps, though, those were the qualities that had identified _his_ less-than-faithful moments. A sly look over wine glasses. A heated touch. Silk sliding over skin. His bodily betrayal was always, always physical. Always in the heat of the moment. Always his libido raging for excitement.

He couldn't help suspect though, that her betrayal – indeed, if she would ever do so – would be far more severe.

He would give his body. But she would give her heart.

At first, he isn't concerned.

By the second week, however, he follows her out.

**Part VII**

The boy is singing.

Truth be told, it's nothing extraordinary. His voice is a little too raspy to be soft, and a little too soft to be raspy – much like her own. But it's honest, and joyous, and a little sleepy in places unseen. His back is turned, legs crossed, elbows jutted out to support his reclining frame as he faces the ocean, crooning to it some unknown song is some unknown language. She wishes she could watch his face as he sings.

"Misaki?"

She turns abruptly, even as the boy continues to sing, and behind her is Tora, looking rumpled and a little bewildered and only slightly endeared all at once.

She opens her mouth to explain and-

"Misaki," he repeats, tone exasperated. "What _are_ you looking at?"

**Part(ly) Unknown**

And just like that, there's this curious feeling akin to relief mixed with apprehension and dread – she knows he is always going to be here, there, somewhere, everywhere. Crooning to her, exulting her, angering her and intimidating her with the reminders of the love she denied.

She must be going mad.

_Misaki_, Tora dimly exerts the word that miraculously reaches her.

She's going mad.

**-x-x-x-**

**End.**

**A/N: Wait, what?**

**I wasn't going to leave it there, but then it kind of stopped rolling and was too hard to push uphill.**

**Might be followed up with a sequel, might not. Depends on how much you love me (hinting? me? never!)**

**(P.S. Tora is the sex.) (If you don't believe me, read the latest chapter of the manga.) (…Case in point.)**


End file.
